Why is The American Right So Resurgent?

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Orson, Jan 1, 2003.

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  1. Orson

    Orson New Member

    The Economist asks why the Tories are down, while the Republicans in the US are resurgent...finds an answer in American Exceptionalism.

    From www.economist.com
    (Dec 19th 2002)

    "[Britain's] Tories...are not the only rightish party to have fallen out of step with the Republicans. Canada's Conservative Party has imploded. Europe's centre-right parties are neither as vigorous nor as right-wing as the Republicans. The more you think about it, the clearer it seems that the Republicans are the exception.

    "It is not just a matter of political success, but of philosophy. It is hard to think of any European party that would have pushed through a tax cut as large as Mr Bush's, that would have junked the Kyoto Protocol, that would campaign so fiercely for the right to bear arms and the death penalty, that would make such a moral crusade out of abortion, that would declare war on an 'axis of evil', that would support Israel so singlemindedly or that would openly smirk at the United Nations.

    [Snip!]

    "By any measure, however, the conservatism of Lady Thatcher and Mr Reagan has survived better in America than in Britain. That has something to do with personalities and chance. But it also reflects underlying moods—and by many measures (see table [at link above]), America is simply more right-wing than Britain.

    "You can trace this back to the constitution with its stress on the individual; to America's enthusiasm for money-making; to that corny old frontier spirit. Geography also plays a part. America is a land of open spaces: demanding more freedom for individuals never seems awkward. Britain is a more crowded place: people have to share. Meanwhile in foreign policy, the most powerful country in the world has no problem trumpeting national sovereignty. Britain, weaker and still checked by post-imperial guilt, is less nationalistic.

    "The innate conservatism of his country might explain what Mr Bush has called his 'distinctly American' approach. It also explains why the Republicans have such an advantage over the Tories. The wonder is how long it took them to discover it."
     
  2. timothyrph

    timothyrph New Member

    I believe the answer also comes in the apology areas. John Major and Geroge Sr. were almost apologetic for being conservative and often tried to call it something else (i.e. compassionate conservatism).

    I hit this tone in a different segment but, I love how the left has to make excuses for conservatives to win. It was the "angry white male" who was then overcome by the loving working "soccer mom" for Clinton. Britain is more crowded and had to "learn to share". People in Florida obviously "did not know who they were voting for".

    In this new year I would love for someone to realize, maybe there are intelligent people who choose the Republican party of conservatism because they think that is the correct course for America. We also do not want to hold any one of any race back, take money from school children, or starve babies in Chicago. We are not for the death penalty because of a racial prejudice, and most of us do not belong to a white's only all male golf and country club or make over 10 figures a year including decimal points.

    In short the Republicans took over because America preferred us, and America is a great and promised land. We could probably under a left centrist government come up to the power and might of Britain and Canada. The sun used to never set on the British Empire.

    The other thing is America is discovering that the Republicans were right. The Soviet Union was an evil empire. North Korea does not appear to be nice guys. There are terrorists and terrorist nations who hate us and Israel and are dedicated to the destruction of both. Maybe this would not fly in enlightened London or Berlin, but then a communist wall was not built in Nebraska.

    I guess I would like all Republicans as a reolution to stop apologizing. Have a happy and joyous new year everybody. I mean that even to Democrats.

    Whole hearted liberalism will defeat half-hearted conservatism every time. - Alan Keyes
     
  3. Dennis Ruhl

    Dennis Ruhl member

    In an election 10 years ago the Canadian Conservative party went from a majority government of close to 200 members of parliament down to 2, a 99% decrease.

    The Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, ignored the will of the electors and brought in a 7 % national sales tax, on top of some of the highest income taxes in the world.

    Shortly before the election Mulroney resigned and was replaced by Canada's first female prime minister, probably the least competent of the several female cabinet members. Most of the prominent Conservatives, seeing the polls and the writing on the wall took their gold plated pensions.

    Did Canadians become more liberal overnight? Not at all. As the Conservative government abandoned its last vetiges of conservatism, it lost its constituency.

    The key to winning any election anywhere is to keep your policies far enough to the centre to capture a large block of voters situated there.

    The Conservatives lost the centre and totally lost their constituency on the right and were destroyed. They were replaced by the Canadian Alliance, which has failed to capture more than a couple seats in the eastern half of the country.

    Lessons for conservatives everywhere. Look after your core supporters. Don't push a liberal agenda because it won't get you one vote. These voters already have a home. Control the right because if they get too powerful, it will scare the centre.

    The most important lesson is not to select incompetent jerks as leaders, because regardless of policy they will lose.
     
  4. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I wonder if the "American right" (whatever that means) really is "resurgent"?

    There doesn't seem to be any huge recent swing to the right in presidential voting. The Republicans did do unexpectedly well in the midterm elections, but these elections were post 9-11 and the Democrats seem to have misread the mood of the country, using an "it's the economy, stupid!" strategy, when the mood was still dominated by security concerns.

    If we want to see real secular trends, perhaps we should look out decades rather than months. If we look back twenty years, we see Ronald Reagan. Has America really moved dramatically to the right of Reagan in the last twenty years?

    I do see some rather long-term changes in the *style* of both the left and the right.

    In the past, the American left was labor-driven. The power in the Democratic party rested in the unions, and the dynamic was poor against the rich. Today the left seems increasingly race (and gender) driven, with women and minorities aligned against the white men.

    The unchanging constant is that the Democrats have always been the *outsider's coalition*. At various points in history the party was the home of immigrants, racial minorities, Catholics, feminists, renters, Jews, the young, university intellectuals, Marxists, gays, the post-civil war South, advocates for the poor etc. The details of the alliance are constantly shifting, but the common denominator remains that the party is driven by those who see themselves as outsiders, as being on the periphery.

    And the Republicans (at least after Lincoln) have been the *insider's coalition*. Native-born Anglophones, Protestants, males, businessmen, law and order advocates, property owners, the middle aged, whites and so on. Flag and patriotism. But with the Republicans too, the balance is always shifting.

    One stereotype is that the Republicans are the rich man's party. That's definitely one faction. Big businessmen whose sons went to prep schools and then on to the ivy league. This group resembles the British conservative party, pre-Thatcher. They don't mind big government per-se, but they want the "right sort of chaps" running it. Paternalistic might sum them up, Rockefeller Republicans. The elder George Bush is one of them, when he's being himself at Kennebunkport.

    They were challenged by a sort of *populist mainstreet* faction of the party. Small businessmen, Rotary club members, the backbone of the small-town Midwest. These people are often surprisingly socially tolerant, but insist on hard work and no-nonsense. They favor self-made men and resent the inherited wealth of the patricians. These are the Bob Dole Republicans.

    Now in part because of the post-60's changes in the Democrats, many Southern whites are changing parties and creating a third *cultural* faction in the party. Social conservatives, often fundamentalists, who are driven primarily by social issues rather than by economic jealousy. Like all Republicans, they see themselves as part of an American mainstream that's under threat, but it's a cultural, even a moral mainstream for them. If the issues were purely economic, many of these people would still be Democrats.

    Ronald Reagan was successful in part because he mobilized these new Southern Republicans so well. The first George Bush got his ass handed to him because he ignored them and played the patrician. The younger Bush has done his best to rectify that, turning himself from a dissolute Yalie into a Texas rancher. But Bush hasn't cut his ties with the preppies either and can appeal very effectively to the rural small-business Midwest too.

    What you see is some pretty adroit juggling, and he's still got all the balls in the air.

    The biggest threat that the Republicans face, in my opinion, is an over-reaching by the cultural right, a misguided attempt to theologically remake America. That would scare hell out of many moderate Republicans who are already uneasy, and hand the country to the Democrats. (Assuming that the Democrats can overcome their own internal divisions long enough to accept it.)

    Republicans have to always remember that their task is to maintain the mainstream, not to overthrow it.

    I disagree with a previous poster. The problem for the Republicans isn't moderate or "kinder and gentler" Republicans. The thing that loses elections is an inability to maintain the coalition.

    The task for the Republicans is to situate themselves culturally to the right of the Democrats, but to avoid being threatening to non-fundie Republicans while doing it.

    They need symbolic issues. Crucifixes in urine or Mary smeared with dung. Any sane person can agree in deploring that, without anyone feeling threatened (except a small cadre of New York artists dependent on NEH grants). Al Sharpton is the Republican's best friend. Republicans go to bed each night thanking God for him. Hillary Rodham Clinton would probably be a godsend.

    The Republicans need to be able to protect decency without being driven into doing Taliban imitations.

    Joe Lieberman is probably the biggest threat to the Republicans. This guy doesn't pander to the cultural left, but he has impeccable outsider credentials as a Jew. It would be very difficult to outflank him on the right without appearing to be an extremist.

    Of course, Lieberman conceivably could provoke dissatisfaction on the left of the Democratic party, so the threat to him would be a third party challenger on his left.

    Bottom line: In the short term at least, politics has little to do with movements of the country to the left or to the right. What drives elections is coalition building and coalition maintaince.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 1, 2003
  5. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    Maybe Americans are finally figuring out that 30+ years of social programs and welfare has brought this country to the brink of collapse?


    Bruce
     
  6. Orson

    Orson New Member

    MANY interesting thoughts from the above posters...

    Dennis Ruhl briefly outlines Canadian politics. And I'd fogotten that amaing situation But what do you think the hiers of the Mulroney suffle can and should be doing? Model themselves on US republicans? But how? i.e., how, without seeming too slavishly American, to un-Canadian?

    BillDayson and timothyrph may agree more than they don't. The trouble fof George Bush (I) was indeed betaying his consitutency--the core anti-tax elements ("No New Taxes!"), as Bill warns against;like timothyrph, he also seemed to have the "difference" of no difference to Clinton--same with Dole in '96.

    Yet, obviously, it took G. W. Bush in 2000 to snatch the southern core of the US to win--essential element of Clinton's two victories.

    But BillDayson correctly notes how extemely well balanced the two-party system is: Greens were blamed for Gore's loss, and Libertarians were blamed for Pubbies loss of two Senate seats in '02!
    The Left IS in long-term intellectual decline. This has struck me ever since the Fall of Comminism. Clinton "triumphs" wereuch more triumphs of style and unction over substance: none of his protejes (sp?" have succeeded in politics, save Hillary.

    Recently, in the university town where I live, I encountered a female clerk reading Howard Zinn. I asked why she was reading a work of economic deteminism when the theory has so resolutely failed? I pointed out that claims by the Left that the US is a greater threat to world peace than Iraq ("Yes" she piped up)were empirically false: most nations of the world are at least nominally democratic, and no modern democracy has attacked another since the first one in 1814; she relied incredulously "You think we're a democracy?" I pointed out that Americans face many more choices in an election--we have many times more elective offices than, say, England. I pointed out that the percentage of total US employment, and the percentage of total US GDP produced by big firms has significantly declined through the late 80s (by somewhat less than one-third)--so Big Companies can't be ruling the country! What about the immiseration of the third-world? Several studies say is just ain't so! Thus stalemated on the facts, she--obviously an anti-globalist--was reduced to saying that "we will just have to agree to disagree," she left the field of battle, In ten minutes I recapitulated discussion I've had with leftists several times over the past two years.

    What must worry Republicans is that Bush is yet to be seen having a real domestic agenda, apart from tax-cuts and mellowing the regulatory beasts beefed-up under Clinton. Can he achieve one without breaking up a winning coalition?

    There are those who also think that there IS NO Repubulican resurgence--but the very hysteria that routinely comes from Dem pols and also from their bench of thinkers such as Joshua Marshall or Eric Alterman speaks to the insecurity of losers. And then there's this: how long has it been since Republicans controlled the three major branches of US government at once? (It's before I was born.) So these are historic times. I think the Lott affair is just a warm up for the Pubbies makeover, rooting out old patrician elements. As Francis Fukyama points out in a recent WSJ op-ed piece, America has never had the conservatism of Europe: protecting The Chruch, The Aristocracy, and anti-egalitarian. The recourse to rediculous stereotypes by Dems, again, reinforces how deep the decline really is. Leftwing ressurgance under Clinton was more apparent than real or sustainable.

    Combine this with Daniel Yeargin's "Commanding Heights," where much of the rightward and pro-market innovation since Thatcher took power, comes first from abroad, and often enough from the reformist parties of the left, and the issue does require explanation. "The Economist" above topic is trenchent, as is the companion piece on Marxism there.

    Today the right is broadly more productive in ideas and innovations--perhaps a new cycle as outlined by Yergin is in the works, only instead of beginning from Thatcher's Britain it will now come from the US?

    --Orson
     

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